"With Windows 8 and its radically redesigned Metro interface, Microsoft is offering software developers a new set of challenges and opportunities. Rather than reusing tactics from building for previous versions of desktop Windows, developers are creating applications in the style introduced on Windows Phone, and making them work across the larger screens of multitouch tablets and keyboard-and-mouse-driven PCs. With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview out, many developers have already built preview versions of the apps they plan to offer Windows 8 tablet and PC users. We spoke with the creators of Photobucket's Windows 8 application to get their take on the Metro development process."

What if your single task is to write a letter to the Central Bureaucracy? You have crunched the numbers in a spreadsheet and you need to reference those numbers to construct your arguments. Hermes Conrad is helping you out through IM and he is talking about emails he send you. You also want to have your Legalese for Dummies ebook at hand.

What are you going to do? Temporarily copy paste your six page spreadsheet and three emails from Hermes into the letter you are writing? Wouldn't it be nice to turn your IM client into an always-on-top window in the corner of your screen, have the ebook open in a virtual screen where you can take a quick peek as needed, and have your letter on one side of the screen and your reference materials on the other.

Sure, your grandmother couldn't handle all that, but she's not the one drafting letters for the Central Bureaucracy. You are. Real tasks are always like this. Even goofing off has you playing Minesweeper while a funny cat video loads in your browser.

If the unwashed masses are such a huge morons that they can't ever be expected to learn to use a windowing system, how come they can nowadays use Angry Birds, Farmville and Facebook?